[A] It is evidently from the beautiful chalk cliff near Ednam House (though now not a very prominent object) that Kelso derives its name—as is proved by the ancient spelling.
HOGMANAY;
OR, THE LADY OF BALLOCHGRAY.
The last fifty years of mortal regeneration and improvement have effected more changes in the old fasts, and feasts, and merrymakings of Scotland, than twice and twice over that time of any other period since it became a nation. Every year we see the good old customs dying out, or strangled by the Protæan imp Fashion, who, in the grand march of improvement of which we are so proud, in the perking conceit of heirs-apparent of the millennium, seems to be the only creature that derives benefit from the eternal changes that, by-and-by, we fear, will turn our heads, and make us look back for the true period of happiness and wisdom. But what enrageth us the more is, that, while all our fun of Beltane, Halloween, Hogmanay, Hanselmonday, and all our old merrymakings, are gone with our absentee lords and thanes—
"Wha will their tenants pyke and squeize,
And purse up all their rent;
Syne wallop it to far courts, and bleize
Till riggs and schaws are spent"—
and to whose contempt of our old customs we attribute a great part of their decay—we, in the very midst of the glorious improvement that has succeeded, are still cheated, belied, robbed, and plundered on all hands by political adventurers, private jobbers, and saintly hypocrites, in an artful, clean-fingered, and beautiful style of the trade, a thousand times more provoking than the clumsy, old-fashioned, honest kind of roguery that used to be in fashion, when folk were not too large for innocent mirth, and not too wise for enjoying what was liked by their ancestors. The people cry improvement—so do we; but we cherish a theory that has no charm, in these days of absolute faith in politics and parliament for the regeneration of man, that the true good of society—that is, the improvement of the heart and morals of a great country—lies in a sphere far humbler than the gorgeous recesses of Westminster—the fireside; a place that in former days, was revered, and honoured, and cherished, not only as the cradle of morals, but the abode of soul-stirring joys, and the scene of the celebration of many old and sacred amusements which humanized the young heart, and moulded and prepared it for the reception of those feelings which are interwoven with the very principle of social good. A political wrangle is a poor substitute for the old moral tales of the winter evenings of old Scotland. Even our legends of superstitious fear carried in them the boon of heartfelt obligation, which, when the subject was changed for the duties of life, still retained its strength, and wrought for good. These things are all gone; and, dissatisfied as we are with the bold substitutes of modern wisdom, let us use that which they cannot take from us, our books of "auld lear," and refresh ourselves with a peep at Leslie, in the Hogmanay of 16—. Who has not heard of "Christ's Kirk" in the kingdom of Fife, that place so celebrated by King James, in his incomparable "Christ's Kirk on the Green," for the frolics of wooers and "kittys washen clean," and "damsels bright," and "maidens mild?" That celebrated town was no other than our modern Leslie; and, though we cannot say that that once favoured haunt of the satyrs of merrymaking has escaped the dull blight that comes from the sleepy eye of the owl of modern wisdom, we have good authority for asserting that long after James celebrated the place for its unrivalled festivities, the character of the inhabitants was kept for many an after-day; and Hogmanay was a choice outlet for the exuberant spirits of the votaries of Momus.
The day we find chronicled as remarkable for an exhibition of the true spirit of the Leslieans, went off as all days that precede a glorious jubilee at night generally do. The ordinary work of the "yape" expectants was, no doubt, apparently going on; but the looking of "twa ways" for gloaming was, necessarily, exclusive of much interest in the work of the day. The sober matrons, as they sat at the door on the "stane settle," little inclined to work, considered themselves entitled to a feast of gossip; and even the guidman did not feel himself entitled to curb the glib tongue of his dame, or close up her ears with prudential maxims against the bad effects of darling, heart-stirring, soul-inspiring scandal. On that day there was no excise of the commodities of character. They might be bought or sold at a wanworth, or handed or banded about in any way that suited the tempers of the people. The bottle and the bicker had already, even in the forenoon, been, to a certain extent, employed as a kind of outscouts of the array that was to appear at night, and the gossipers were in that blessed state, between partial possession and full expectation, that makes every part of the body languid and lazy except the tongue. Around them the younkers, "hasty hensures" and "wanton winklots," were busy preparing the habiliments of the guysers—whose modes of masking and disguising were often regulated by the characters they were to assume, or the songs they had learned to chant for the occasion. Nor were these mimes limited to the urchin caste; for, in these days, wisdom had not got so conceited as to be ashamed of innocent mirth; and gaucy queens and stalwarth chiels exhibited their superiority only in acting a higher mask, and singing a loftier strain. The gossips did not hesitate to suspend the honeyed topic, to give sage counsel on the subject of the masking "bulziements;" and anon they turned a side look at the minor actors, the imps of devilry, who passed along with their smoking horns often made of the stem or "runt" of a winter cabbage, wherewith that night they would inevitably smoke out of "house and hauld" every devil's lamb of every gossip that did not open her hand and "deal her bread" to the guysers. Both parties, gossips and urchins, understood each other—like two belligerent powers asserting mutual rights, and contemplating each other with that look of half-concealed contention and defiance, which only tended to make the attack more inevitable.
The evening set in, and the witching hour—the keystone of night's black arch, twelve o'clock—was approaching. To go to bed on such an occasion, would have been held no better than for a jolly toper to shirk his bicker, a lover to eschew the trysting thorn, or a warrior to fly the scene of his country's glory; neither would it have been safe, for no good guyser of the old school would take the excuse of being in bed in lieu of the buttered pease-bannock—the true hogmanay cake, to which he was entitled, by "the auld use and wont" of Scotland; and far better breathe the smoke of the "smeikin horn" on foot, and with the means of self-defence at command, than lie choked in bed, and "deaved" by the stock and horn, the squalling bagpipe, and the eternal—
"Hery, Hary, Hubblischow,
See ye not quha is come now!"
ringing in one's ears during the whole night. The young were out; the old were in; but all were equally up and doing the honours of the occasion. At auld Wat Wabster's door, one minstrel company were singing—"Great is my sorrow;" and Marion, his daughter, with